How Do We Make Sense of Obama’s, Clinton’s and Panetta’s Actions During the Benghazi Attack?

None of that makes any sense. It’s inconceivable that the top three U.S. officials who would be accountable for the American lives and property at Benghazi would not communicate with each other during an ongoing attack. If she had nothing to hide, Clinton should have been climbing the walls until Obama authorized a serious and forceful response to rescue her friend Chris Stevens. Panetta should have been responding to Obama’s orders to bring our people home if possible, or disperse or kill the attackers if it wasn’t.

Yet Panetta says that after the 5 p.m. meeting he never communicated with either Obama or Clinton. If this is true, were they not derelict in their duties? Obama cannot have been unaware of the scale of the attack: We had a drone overhead and security cameras on the ground, and our forces on the ground were telling Washington what was happening. The fog of war was not very thick.

When the Benghazi attack occurred, Barack Obama was less than two months away from his reckoning with the voters. The polls were tight and any event could have moved them one way or the other. Mitt Romney had sewn up the GOP nomination and was flexing his muscle as a fundraiser. He had outfoxed Obama’s campaign a couple of times, pushing Solyndra into the headlines and even getting into David Axelrod’s grill and under his skin at an event in Boston.

Obama could not run on the economy or his signature legislative achievement, ObamaCare. His campaign had built a narrative of the president as an effective commander-in-chief who had killed Osama bin Laden and put al Qaeda on the run. “Osama is dead and GM is alive!” was Vice President Joe Biden’s favorite sentence. Other than the fact of bin Laden’s demise, this was not a national security fact; it was a political narrative aimed at getting Obama re-elected. Al Qaeda had in fact begun to cement a new relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and had grown in influence in Libya and across the Middle East. Its Libya brand, Ansar al-Sharia, had become a threat in the Benghazi area itself the summer leading up to the attack. Ansar al-Sharia was the author of the attack in Benghazi.

Here is a theory regarding Obama’s, Panetta’s, and Clinton’s actions that night.

AxeMan being there is plausible, anything is possible with "Colonel Klink" Obama. Reggie Love might have been there too. Heck, he might have even been having one of his special parties in the Incident Room that evening.

Snarky speculation aside, Barry and Hillary still don't know what they have done. They don't understand the military men and women and how they think. They don't understand that if you require proud, faithful, loyal, brave soldiers and intelligence officers who serve this country all the time--not just during one presidential election--to follow a plan that is cowardly, disloyal, and gives aid and comfort to our enemies, you have unleashed the hounds of hell. BHO and HRC think they can win this in the spin room, that's not where all the action will be.

Many people care about the truth and it will be told. We are to the Truth and Consequences portion of the "program".

Your theory is a good one ... but it leaves me believing its a cold trail.Once again; two pivotal facts in all this are being left out; the Obama administration's cozy relationship with Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood (AQ & MB have the exact same goals). I have some questions too:

1.The flag being flown at the "compound" by the attackers was the black Al Qaeda flag - Why is that not mentioned directly?2. With the Blind Sheik release demands still fresh and the resulting attacks; and with Al Qaeda members being given security detail at the "compound";Was there a deal brokered to perhaps kidnap Stevens and demand the Sheiks release? This may have been what went wrong; some of the attackers got "carried away" once the frenzy began, and Stevens death was a miscalculation in the "I have to swap the Blind Sheik for Anbassador Stevens; so as to quell the uprising" deal, made with Morsi.3. Who was it - in the Obama administration - that peddled the "movie" idea? I believe it was the Muslim Brotherhood since their presence and MO can be CLEARLY seen in every aspect of this siege of the Cairo and Benghazi consulates. 4. Huma Abedin's creds are all over this debacle and her resumé as an MB operative (along with many others in the administration) is an established fact. Why are we silent about the MB and AQ's involvement with the Obama administration?

Your theory matches the suspicions of REAL enemy, and the cluelessness of their partners in the attempted "take-down" of the U.S.A. The Blind Sheik's blindness is physical; but the administration's blindness is willful.We won't get any clear answers unless we confront Islam - and that means that we have to confront those that have spent billions of dollars; countless man-hours planning and executing political jihad in the U.S.A. - beginning in the late sixtes with the establishment of the first MSA Muslim Brotherhood cell. That is what is being avoided by Clinton and Obama and Panetta; deal with that fact and everything else falls into place.

Obvious conjecture, but it fits the Barkster to a tee. Fits Hilly and Leon, both old guard garden variety Marxists who view the world through an anti military mentality, to a tee too. Politics 1st, friends lives 2nd, country 3rd.The American Sheeple don't give two rat craps about 'Bin Gauzie. The Repub commitee examiners will screw up the hearing with their stupid 4 minute a piece questioning, Ellijah Cummings will call anybody who demands accountability a racist or sexist, the MSM will bleach, rinse, and fold, and all will be well for the Hilster for 2016.People in this country who have integrity and principal are becoming a smaller and smaller part of the electorate. Most Americans no longer value competence. We've been educated away from valuing that.

Hillary actually was truthful when she said "it doesn't matter." It's clear that it "didn't matter" to her or the administration before, during AND after the attacks. Actions or non-actions speak far louder than words. Does anyone think that Ronald Reagan would have gone to bed if this attack happened on his watch or that he wouldn't have immediately fired his secretary of state for leaving these people to die. I think not.

One word says it all....POLITICS..All three are political hacks regardless of the level to which they have risen. Clinton, the guy, was was political long before he actually entered politics as was Hillary. There were few jobs not directly connected with politics...the same can be said for Panetta.

Bryan, you may well be right that Obama's primary reason for not taking action during the assault on the Benghazi consulate was fear that a rescue would go as badly as Carter's attempt to free the American hostages in Iran or the Black Hawk Down episode in Mogadishu. A failed attempt would undoubtably hurt him with the electorate and with an election just weeks away, it must have been a major concern. Americans don't much like failure.

But it seems to me that Americans hate one thing worse that failure: cowardice. If Obama were to try and fail, he would take a hit for that but he might eventually be forgiven. Certainly, a lot of people seem to manage to hold Jimmy Carter in high esteem despite the failure of his rescue mission.

If the investigation proves that Obama simply didn't try to rescue the Americans in Benghazi, I truly hope it earns him and all his minions the undying contempt of every American of every political persuasion. A successful impeachment would then be a fantastic expression of that contempt.

No President should ever get a free pass for not even TRYING to help Americans in distress overseas.

For some reason, I never held Desert One against Carter. It was a major Charlie Foxtrot from start to finish, but it wasn't his fault. I mean, they were going to use a hastily-cobbled-together, rocket-equipped C-130 to land in a soccer stadium, pick up the hostages, and then rocket them to freedom? Seriously? In what Rambo movie does something like that succeed? Fortunately, the plane in question crashed and burned during testing rather than during the rescue attempt. But that just shows how ill-equipped America and its military were at the time for handling situations like the hostage crisis.

However, I do blame Carter for his foolish handling of the entire Iraq situation - from dealing with the Shah to dealing with the Ayatollah and the "student revolutionaries." Lame. He did his best to get the hostages out, but he was responsible for getting them captured in the first place.

Obama? I think he got blind-sided. He thought everything was jake in Libya, just like his Narrative said it was. When things went pear shaped, he was the proverbial deer in the headlights. He had no Progressive party line to tell him how to think or what to do. With no guidance from him, everybody else in DC froze or panicked as well. Then, thoroughly rattled and realizing something really BAD had just happened (to them, they probably thought) they all went into CYA mode. What I saw was the equivalent of a very frightened person babbling incoherently. Bad show all around.

Would you agree that it would have been even worse if Carter had not made the attempt, however half-baked, to free the hostages?

That's the point I was trying to make. I think Obama failing to even make the EFFORT to get the embassy staff some help was even worse than if he had made an effort that failed.

If I were one of the embassy staff, I would feel VERY disillusioned that my president had abandoned me to my fate and hadn't made any effort whatever to rescue me. I think that's why some of those staffers have come forward and spoken out about it, rather than just "taking one for the team".

It seems fairly likely to me that the reason for characterizing the attack as a spontaneous response to the movie wasn't to downplay the threat of organizaed terrorism per se, but to try to conceal the State Department's failure to beef up security in the months preceding. If the attack was a spontaneous reaction to an an obscure, recent event having nothing to do with the administration (i.e., a movie that had only recently gained attention in the Islamic world), then that would help excuse Hilllary's failure to anticipate the need for additional security. If, instead, it was exactly the thing Ambassador Stevens had been sounding the alarm about, it would be seen as an enormous failure of judgment on the part of Hillary or whoever else was involved in addressing Stevens' concerns.

I don't quite buy the argument that this was mainly about maintaining the pretense that terrorism was dead. Obama wasn't going to lose the election over one relatively small-scale attack on one overseas embassy. On the other hand, Obama's -- and Hillary's -- electoral prospects could well have been damaged if the deaths were revealed to be on account of a failure to provide proper security despite repeated requests.

They'll likely try to claim that the Republicans wouldn't provide funding for enough security, but given that very secure embassies in very quite parts of the world have and had Marines guarding them, Marines who could easily have been shuffled to duty in a much more dangerous area with money to hire private security then being used in those quiet areas of the world ... I don't see how that dog hunts.

The fact that the requested beefed-up security in Benghazi wasn't provided is very curious indeed. No matter how you view the events - incompetence, politics as usual, conspiracy, etc. - the failure to provide the security is a puzzle. What could have been lost or gained in this?

This all makes for a good story outline for a novel or a mini-series, which is probably what most of the citizenery think it is, but that's about it. This mess would and should destroy a Republican administration but it will have no effect whatsoever on the brain-dead that constitute the liberal establishment and Obama voter base ..... or the Republican "leadership" for that matter.

We give Obama, Clinton, and men like Brennan too much credit with respect to these conspiracy theories. They are not that smart. In fact, they are grossly incompetent. But they are clearly well established in instinct as are all sociopaths: aggressive yet charming, motivated yet irresponsible.

FeralCat has it exactly right. Depraved indifference to lives not directly tied to them, and the insatiable need for power, adulation and fame. That is their motivator.

Whether it be like Benghazi to provide cover for the incompetence, or never letting a crisis go to waste like making the power play to take guns away from gun owners, the one constant is to remain in power and be fawned over.

Does anybody really think Obama's alligator tears for the children of Newtown real? Everything the man does is an act. Same with Hillary. They are what they need to be at any given moment in time. There is neither truth nor goodness in Obama or his associates.

If they do have a conscience, it is a completely self absorbed one.

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